


The One Thing You Can Rely On

by lobac



Series: Vaguely Chronological Bouts Of Introspection [3]
Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Distorted Thinking, Horny Symbiote Rights, Other, Symbiotic Relationship Dysfunction, The Absolute Antics Of It All
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 01:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21419656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobac/pseuds/lobac
Summary: Remember that time the symbiote tried to leave Eddie to go back to Peter, and it was a whole thing, and the next time they showed up, it was just kind of fine? What's up with that.
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Series: Vaguely Chronological Bouts Of Introspection [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1431601
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	The One Thing You Can Rely On

Eddie wakes up in a nightmare. He’d like to think so, at least.

A thin mat under his back. The faint smell of lemon cleaner. Lights, far too bright for bleary eyes.

When he moves, there’s a horrible, unnatural ache all throughout him, like his insides are rubbing together wrong, like he’s been internally stripped of a layer. He stumbles forward, bare feet on cold concrete, catches himself against the transparent wall and looks out into the structure he’s found himself in, engineered to drive a man to hopelessness. The Vault.

His fingers curl into fists, smearing his handprints across the surface. He had, to put it lightly, not planned on ending up here again.

Eddie reaches behind himself and pulls through, punching the reinforced glass. The impact vibrates through his knuckles. He bares his teeth at the guard across the hallway, who says nothing, doesn’t move. Most of his face obscured, mouth in a thin, straight line. Will he descend into jeering, too? Will he mock his pain? His mission?

It’s bad enough, being watched. Trapped. Exposed. Permeated by the gaze of judgement and control. It reminds him of the tube, or the tubes, plural, it echoes with pain that isn’t his own, that is...

...Not present.

Eddie blinks.

He can’t feel it.

The fear he’d expect- The gratitude, for being able to recede into his body-

No. No longer. His body, it wasn’t a sanctuary anymore, it was just another cage-

His Other- Except it wasn’t his-

Eddie's head starts swimming. He sways backwards, drops onto the cot. For a moment, he sits there, stunned, hands hovering. Then he pats himself down, pulls at his clothes, standard issue, stiff, scratchy, and definitely, definitely not alive.

What did it do to him?

What did they do to it?

He looks around himself, frantic. He has to get out. He has to get to it. Spider-Man already has his venomous fangs lodged in its soul, him and his kind could destroy it utterly. It can’t end like this. No matter what.

Eddie lifts his arm, fully intending to break his fingers against the glass. They'll have to open the cell, then. He can figure out how to proceed from there. He’s almost looking forward to choking the guard out, thinks that, maybe, the stiffness of his posture isn’t discipline, maybe he’s heard of what happened to the last one, maybe he can still use that fear to his advantage-

Just as he gains momentum, something pulls him back. The slightest mental nudge. Soft and pleading and familiar. Eddie whips around, but there’s nothing, nowhere... Except, he now realises, some vague sensation at the back of his neck. His hands fly towards it, and when they meet a thin tendril, a sharp breath pushes itself out of his chest.

He slides the soft strand through his fingers, brings it to the front of his head, and sees nothing there, nothing but a vague shimmer.

It’s camouflaging. Hiding. It’s completely cut itself off.

It tried to leave him. And it’s still receded from him, as far as it can.

Eddie grinds his teeth.

He grabs the symbiote like a rope and pulls, pulls down, leans into it with all his weight, but it soon refuses to budge. That’s fine. He stretches it taut. 

It squirms underneath his fingers. “I just want to talk,” he forces out, putting one foot up against the wall, then the other. It extends out of nowhere, refusing to let him ascend towards it, but he keeps reaching forward like a man in the middle of a very convincing pantomime routine.

Until, of course, he is dropped flat on his back. 

From there, he takes a deep breath. Tries to feel it out. It’s still... somewhere up there, definitely. In some corner of the ceiling, as far away as it can get. Maybe... spanning across it? Like a web, thinned out to be less visible?

Eddie quickly stops thinking about it. It must still be attached to him, he thinks instead, loudly, with no idea whether the volume of his internal voice makes any difference, and gets back on his feet. Where, oh where could it be coming from, he thinks, rubbing at his neck. It must have moved. He can’t even tell that it’s permeating his skin anywhere, so it must be covering that sensation up, too.

He reaches under his shirt, feeling for some protrusion. Makes quick work of taking it off and flinging it into the corner. “I know,” he says, contorting himself to examine the skin between his shoulder blades, “I know you can’t actually get out.” Unceremoniously, he pulls off his pants. “No matter how hard you try.” He raises one knee to step on the cot, then pokes his way up his calf.

It’s not that he needs to find it. He just needs to get close enough to distract it. Make it focus on shifting away from him down here, so it won’t shift away up there. 

He runs his hands up his thigh, closed around it - not enclosing all of it, of course. There’s... some hint of a reaction, maybe? Some twitch? It must be nearby. He moves further up, into the curve of his hipbone, and...

Hm.

There’s something. Eddie narrows his eyes. He moves back down, places one hand squarely on the inside of his thigh, and gives it a squeeze.

Okay.

That’s not the kind of distraction he was going for, but he’s pretty sure he wasn’t the one who, just for a second, longed to be enveloped in the density of his muscles again. 

He’s not the one getting antsy when he slides one hand under the waistband of his boxers, either. 

Eddie tries not to smirk. It's a token effort.

With the symbiote in a bind, and without so much as a thought’s worth of warning, he bounces on his back leg, jumps from the cot, pushes up the wall, blindly scrapes the corner of the ceiling-

And comes away, or rather, stays there, with a tight fist full of goo, relenting into its usual, shimmering black, quite miserably stretching downwards with his weight. The rest of it is stretched across the ceiling in countless strands, which it must’ve weaved itself into to stave off a nervous breakdown. Eddie’s feet are still planted, firmly, against the wall. He’s practically perpendicular. He’s got the core strength for it.

In fact, he wraps the symbiote around his hands and keeps walking up the wall, feet well above his head, until he hits the ceiling, arms trembling.

Upside-down and near-naked, he looks straight into the visor of the guard standing outside. A single drop of sweat appears to be rolling down his chin.

I’ve got you, Eddie thinks, then, for lack of air. Talk to me. I’m not going to stop until you do.

He pulls his hands apart. It’s like laffy taffy. A distinct hissing sound fills the air.

You know, he thinks, you know, more than anyone, that I won’t. 

He only gets tense silence in response.

I’m going to let go now, he thinks, and does.

In a split second, the symbiote rushes to catch him, pulling his head away from where it could’ve broken his neck, shooting tendrils towards his arms and legs, wrapping around him until he’s tangled up in its netting. “There you go,” he chokes out, bouncing in it. “You still care.”

All at once, the symbiote drops them both onto the cot. It puts some distance between them, stiff and stringy, eyes narrowed in what it understands to be a threat display, but just looks like it's pouting. He can tell, now, that it's scared, scared of his reaction, scared of living in a constant state of rejection. Scared it'll be trapped in the bond it found freedom in. Scared of the same things he's scared of.

It fully expects him to lash out. It's prepared to lash out in return. 

Worse: It's prepared to keep its distance.

It's ruined everything, it thinks.

Then and there, Eddie makes a decision. He may deny it, but he does. He turns his brain around, and it takes off in the direction of whatever will bring them relief.

Not being good enough still makes him want to run and hide. But he can’t run or hide from the symbiote, so he's good enough for it. Being rejected still makes him feel like a trapped animal, lashing out with teeth and claws. But that’s not what he wants to do. Not to it, anyway. And so, he hasn’t been rejected.

He just needs it to work with him.

“Tell me,” he says, only a little desperately, “what he did to you.”

The symbiote’s tendrils rise. Every second without an accusation seems to be setting it on edge.

“Just one more time.”

It looks him up and down. Communicates, weakly. He...

“He cast you aside,” he interrupts. “He used you. You loved him... And still, he abandoned you. As soon as you were no longer a means to an end.”

It stares. Then it pulls into itself, looking like chewing gum that’s been stretched out and left behind on the sidewalk. Eddie gets on his knees, leaning over the slime.

“Tell me, does that sound like something you would do? After experiencing that for yourself, does it really make sense that you’d do the same thing to me?”

Eddie reaches out to it. The symbiote recedes under his fingers, trembling. 

“I would never hurt you,” Eddie says. “I’m not like him. And you...”

It’s not like him, either. Of course not. There’s distress, some memory of feeling compelled, feeling the need to return, to do better, to be loved again. But it hadn’t done anything wrong in the first place, and it hadn’t ever been loved. None of it, none of it was true. None of it was what it really wanted.

Gently, he strokes across the symbiote’s mass. Slowly, it flattens out.

It was him, it thinks, bitterly. Eddie exhales with relief.

“Yes,” he says. “You let him into your heart. Now he’s made a home there.”

He sits back on his feet, feeling a little light-headed.

“He’s... controlling you, still. As he did. You have to resist his... machinations. You have to emancipate yourself.”

The symbiote, finally, slides towards him, across his skin, underneath it. Finally, it starts to heal the damage left behind by the forceful separation. Finally, it shows its true nature again, warm and soothing, yet burning with purpose, allied only to him.

“How would that best be done, do you think? How can you destroy the one inside you?”

It has to destroy the one outside it, first. Black tar in his lungs. Teeth in his throat. Claws on his heart.

“Yes,” Eddie says. “Yes, you understand. The more pain he deals us, the stronger we become. The more injustice he brings into the world, the harder we’ll strike him down. You can’t... We can’t falter, anymore.”

They’re eager to get back to it, both. Eager to get out. The symbiote emerges from his wrists, flowing upwards, rolling around his fingers and covering his hands until he has claws to admire, snug against his skin. Eddie does wonder.

“If you were trying to hide,” he says, softly smiling down at it, “I've got some better ideas...”


End file.
